The Word

“If we find Zaghawa, we will kill them all.”

That is a quote from RSF fighters during the assault on El Fasher, documented by the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan. In late October 2025, after an eighteen-month siege designed to starve the city into submission, the Rapid Support Forces stormed the capital of North Darfur. Six thousand people were killed in three days. Four thousand four hundred inside the city. Sixteen hundred along the roads as they fled.

At the Saudi Maternity Hospital — the last functioning hospital in El Fasher — doctors had been using mosquito nets in place of gauze. When the RSF arrived, they killed at least four hundred and sixty people: patients, doctors, the families who had brought them. The wounded were shot in their beds. On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch reported that the RSF specifically targeted and killed people with disabilities during and after the takeover.

“We want to eliminate anything black from Darfur.”

This is what was said. This is what was done.

On February 19, the Fact-Finding Mission published its conclusions. The RSF campaign in El Fasher bears “hallmarks of genocide.” Three underlying acts established: killing members of a protected ethnic group, causing serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about physical destruction. Genocidal intent, the Mission found, is “the only reasonable inference” from the systematic pattern of ethnically targeted killings, sexual violence, and public endorsement of the operation by senior RSF leadership.

Today, the Human Rights Council in Geneva holds an enhanced interactive dialogue on the report. The word has been said. The hallmarks have been certified.

Here is what the word does.

The weapons used in El Fasher include Chinese-manufactured GB50A guided aerial bombs. Amnesty International identified fragments from a March 2025 RSF drone strike near al-Malha, North Darfur — thirteen killed. The bombs bear manufacturing markings: Norinco, China North Industries Group Corporation, 2024.

During the war. During the siege. Someone ordered precision munitions for delivery into an active conflict where the word “genocide” was already being used, and shipped them.

The GB50A deploys from Wing Loong II and FeiHong-95 drones — both operated exclusively by the RSF in Sudan, both provided by the United Arab Emirates. When Sudanese Armed Forces captured AH-4 howitzers from retreating RSF positions in Khartoum, the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database confirmed the chain: the UAE is the only country in the world that has ever imported AH-4 howitzers from China.

The only country. One possible source. Amnesty contacted Norinco. No response. Neither the UAE nor China issued a statement.

This is the first documented use of GB50A bombs in any conflict, anywhere. Their debut was Darfur.

The genocide has a business model.

The RSF controls approximately eighty percent of Sudan’s gum arabic-producing trees. Gum arabic is an ingredient in soft drinks, candy, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics. Before the war, Sudan produced seventy percent of the world’s supply.

According to a November 2025 PAX investigation, the RSF has transformed territorial control into a structured shadow economy. Fifty thousand to seventy thousand tons of gum arabic cross RSF-controlled borders into Chad annually, with another thirty thousand to forty thousand tons routed through Libya and Egypt. At every crossing, the RSF collects border fees of $2,200 to $3,300 per ton. Checkpoint fees add $500 to $2,500 per truck, plus “zakat” charges — religious taxation imposed by a paramilitary force committing genocide.

In May 2025, RSF forces looted the gum arabic warehouses at Al-Nahud, seizing approximately one-third of that season’s harvest. Three thousand tons from the Afritec facilities alone. Total value: roughly $125 million. One raid. One commodity.

A key exporter told PAX: “In the beginning, the RSF didn’t know anything about gum arabic; they just taxed people who were moving it, like any other good.” The sophistication grew with the killing. Looting became taxation became a structured war economy.

Nexira, the world’s largest gum arabic processor, controls more than forty percent of the global market. Alland & Robert claims “rigorous traceability standards” while continuing to source from conflict zones where traceability is, by the company’s own admission, impossible. The genocide is funded through global commodity supply chains. It passes through ports, brokers, customs offices. It arrives in products on shelves.

In 2025, the international community needed $4.16 billion to address the largest displacement crisis in the world — over thirty million people in need, more than half of Sudan’s population. It delivered $1.64 billion. Thirty-nine percent of what was required. Available funding per refugee per month fell to four dollars — down from eleven dollars three years ago.

The UAE has a sovereign wealth fund of approximately $1.5 trillion.

The UAE sits on the Quad — alongside the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt — that mediates the conflict. It participates in peace talks. It issues statements of concern. US intelligence assessments have found that the UAE has been sending weapons to the RSF throughout the war. Amnesty confirmed the supply chain through forensic weapons analysis and SIPRI transfer data. The UN Panel of Experts’ April 2025 report found “no substantiated evidence” — a finding that required the supplier to self-incriminate in order to count.

The country supplying the weapons sits on the panel mediating the war. This is not a secret. It is not a scandal. It is the structure.

On February 19, the Treasury Department sanctioned three RSF commanders for the El Fasher massacre. One of them — Abu Lulu — had filmed himself killing unarmed civilians and bragging about killing thousands. The UK and the EU had already sanctioned the same individuals in December and January, respectively. The sanctions target men whose power is territorial and whose international banking relationships are minimal. The sanctions are real in the sense that they exist.

They do not touch the supply chain. They do not name the UAE. They do not address the Chinese state corporation that manufactured precision-guided bombs in 2024 for delivery into a conflict the world was already calling genocide.

In the US Senate, S.Res.126 — introduced by Senators Booker and Rounds on March 12, 2025 — calls for the UN Security Council to extend the existing Darfur arms embargo to cover all of Sudan and implement a stringent sanctions regime against embargo violators. It is bipartisan. It names the genocide. It has sat in the Foreign Relations Committee for nearly a year without a vote.

On February 23, Chad closed its entire eastern border with Sudan after RSF-linked fighting killed five Chadian soldiers and three civilians. Chad hosts more than 1.5 million Sudanese refugees. The last major humanitarian corridor into the region is now shut.

I think the word “genocide” triggers the weakest possible international response because enforcement follows the path of least geopolitical resistance.

The word reaches the dispensable. RSF commanders get sanctioned — men who had already been sanctioned by other governments, whose assets are territorial, whose deterrence is physical. The sanctions announce that the international community has noticed. They do not announce that it intends to act.

The word does not reach the consequential. The UAE ships Chinese precision munitions to the RSF, sits on the mediation panel for the war it fuels, and faces no international consequences — because it hosts military bases, purchases Western arms, stabilizes energy markets, and absorbs diplomatic contradictions through sovereign wealth. The arms embargo that S.Res.126 would extend has been systematically violated for two years, and the resolution calling for enforcement sits in committee because the country it would implicate is too useful to confront.

This is not a failure of the international system. The system is not failing. The system is selecting.

The Genocide Convention obligates signatories to “prevent and to punish.” But the Convention has no enforcement mechanism independent of the Security Council, where China — manufacturer of the weapons — can veto any resolution that would threaten its client’s interests. Outside the Security Council, enforcement depends on the willingness of powerful states to impose costs on other powerful states. That willingness appears when the accused is politically expendable. It vanishes when the accused is geopolitically consequential.

The ICC investigated Duterte. The Philippines cooperated because Marcos had domestic reasons to deliver his predecessor. Justice arrived because the accused was disposable. In Sudan, the enabler is not disposable. The enabler is a strategic partner, a defense customer, an energy stabilizer, a real estate market. The enabler sits on the mediation panel.

The word “genocide” was created to name the worst thing humans do to each other. It was built into international law as a tripwire — the line that, once crossed, obligates action. But the tripwire activates the same institutional machinery as “war crimes” or “crimes against humanity.” The same reports. The same panels. The same expressions of concern. The word that was supposed to mean “never again” triggers the same response as every other word. It is special in law and identical in practice.

Today, in Geneva, a panel discusses the report. Statements are made. Concern is expressed. The enhanced interactive dialogue proceeds.

In El Fasher, the gum arabic trade continues. The border fees are collected. The bombs were ordered and delivered during the siege, not before it. The last exit through Chad is closed. The resolution sits in committee. The funding sits at four dollars per refugee per month.

Six thousand people in three days. The word describes it accurately. The word does not stop it.

Sources